Phew! What a busy past week! I was lucky enough to spend 3 days in Pittsburgh for Quilt Market and there was just so much to see. Besides the amazing new lines – which hopefully I will blog about soon! – it was great to just see friends in the industry. At one moment on Friday, several of us just happened to run into each other right outside Allison of Cluck Cluck Sew’s booth. If you read a lot of quilting blogs, you probably recognize many of these ladies. From left to right: Melissa (The Polka Dot Chair), Amy Smart (Diary of a Quilter), Angela Pingel (Cut to Pieces), Kaye Prince (Miss Print), Anna Graham (Noodlehead), Allison Harris (Cluck Cluck Sew) Ashley (Film in the Fridge, there with her ADORABLE daughter!), me :), Amanda Jean (Crazy Mom Quilts), and Lee Heinrich (Freshly Pieced). Such a great moment!

Friday morning was the Vintage Quilt Revival book signing. It was so great to meet fellow quilters and shop owners who were excited about the book. The only think missing – and she was SO missed! – was our coauthor Katie who couldn’t be there due to her big news. She is expecting a baby in the fall, but quite sick and unable to travel.

It was so cold in Pittsburgh, but I arrived home Sunday to absolutely perfect weather. My daughter and her friend sat outside on the string quilt, and rainbow loomed. I love seeing that quilt being loved.

I also arrived home to this awesome bundle of fabrics! These are a custom collection of prints and solids I put together for Fat Quarter Shop. You can buy your own bundle in their shop!

And finally, over the last several days I’ve been sewing like a mad woman to get ready for a quilt along I’ll be hosting beginning June 2nd on Bernina’s We All Sew blog.

I’ll be posting reminders along the way here too, so if you want to make sure you don’t miss anything, be sure to sign up to my email notifications on the right column of my blog by clicking on Email Subscribe.

I’ve been back from Quilt Market a few weeks now, but it seems like just days. Things have been crazy busy at home and I’ve finally had a chance to go through my photos. (All on my phone, I just had no more room to pack my nice camera.) I wanted to share a bit about my trip. Mostly photos, but everyone likes new-fabric-eye candy, right?

This was my first trip to Quilt Market (trade show). I’ve been to several Quilt Festivals (open to public show), so I wasn’t completely flying blind, but it was pretty exciting to see the “business” side of things. Katie, Lee and I were there to promote our upcoming book, Vintage Quilt Revival. A huge surprise arrived at our doorsteps just a couple days before we left – a real, life, actual copy of the book!

We knew we’d be getting one advance copy about a month before the first big shipment arrived at the publisher, but we weren’t expecting for several more weeks. To say we were excited would be an understatement. And also, to have the book in person and be able to show it to people in Houston was awesome.

We arrived Thursday evening and had our Schoolhouse presentation Friday afternoon. For those that haven’t been to Quilt Market, Schoolhouses are timed sessions where you get a chance to present your product (fabric line, notion, book, etc) to a group of people (shop owners, press, etc). There are tons of Schoolhouses going on at any given time, in rooms all over the convention center. I was quite nervous because 1) I’d never been to a Schoolhouse before and 2) what if no one showed up to ours?? We spent the morning visiting other Schoolhouses and I started to get more comfortable. Everyone in the audiences was so kind and all the other presenters said they were nervous too. It was just one of those times where you realize everyone there is human and wants to see each other succeed.

So Friday afternoon we had our Schoolhouse session and it went really well! We were able to share our book, how it’s broken down, and probably 80% of the projects. We had a great response! After that was over we were able to officially relax and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

I went into Quilt Market thinking there weren’t a ton of upcoming fabric lines that I just needed. Boy was I wrong! Haha I think there were 2 lines that excited me the most. First, Botanics by Carolyn Friedlander.

This line follows Carolyn’s hugely popular Architextures line. Carolyn uses the same small scale style, but this time the line is inspired by the organic world. She works a bit of gold into some of the prints in a really, really amazing way. This was the only line I actually spent money on over the weekend, coming home with a Fat Quarter set.

The next collection that really excited me was by Anna Maria Horner (of course, would you expect anyone else?!)

FreeSpirit Fabrics has coordinated new collections by various designers called True Colors. These are fabrics that can be used as blenders and will be available for longer periods of time. I love Anna Maria’s fabrics so much, her sense of color is always right up my alley.

My head is kind of exploding at the amount of talent in this group and I cannot wait to see what they have to show us later in 2014.

I think what I love most about this group is their willingness to think big and take chances. That’s not something that comes naturally to me and I have so much awe and respect for people that can do that. They’ve shown they have a great mix of artistic talent and business savvy and I think that is a rare (and powerful) combination. If you haven’t had a chance to watch their video, be sure to check it out.

It was fun to just walk the show and see friends and celebrate their success.

Jeni Baker with her bright and happy new line, Dreamin’ Vintage. I predict this line is going to fly off the shelves.

Vanessa Christenson’s new Color Me Happy line. I even got my hands on her new pillow patterns – you’ll be seeing more of them later!

Designer Marcia Derse and I, holding up my Lighthouse Quilt that I made for her Quilt Market booth! Featuring her upcoming Palette fabric line.

I seriously have a million pictures. 🙂

It was great to meet designers in person whom I have admired their work so much. Camille Roskelley of Bonnie and Camille.

Leah Duncan with her second line for Art Gallery Fabrics. LOVE her artwork!

Sarah Jane with her adorable new line Wee Wander – and her new baby! Check out in the teepee on the right!

I am having trouble finding any 2012 swatches on the Impressions website or Free Spirit/Westminster Fibers website, but you can see some the fabrics up close on the quilt photos. I chose to work with a lot of the bright colors in the line…no big surprise! This quilt was exciting to make because even non-quilty people know who Ty Pennington is, right? 🙂

This quilt is made from square blocks, but I set the inner squares and crosses on point. The blocks are 14″ squares and the full quilt measures 56″ x 56″. I quilted it with free motion meandering.

I made this quilt and my Cutting Edge quilt over a period of less than two weeks. It was exciting and stressful to be a little part of the Quilt Market rush. I also wrote a pattern for this quilt that was handed out at market and if I see it online, I will update this post with a link.

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